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One of the best courses I have taken so far. The instructor is simply the best and the material is awesome. I learnt so much and could not stop until I finished. Great job Prof. You are the best.

HH

Apr 26, 2016

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I enjoyed the course very much, and especially the tutor's interesting and informative way of teaching.\n\nthank you very much. I feel that ai have really benefitted from it.\n\nHilary Tirnover

从本节课中

The Classical Era

Would you believe that once upon a time, musical compositions were viewed as disposable, one-time-use entertainment? Could you imagine an orchestra attempting to perform a beautiful piece over the sounds of noisy patrons in a casino? How about a violin being drowned out by a dog loudly barking outside of a café? Well, this was the reality before the turn of the 18th century. It wasn’t until around 1800 that people began to appreciate musical compositions, as they do today. This was the same time we started to see large concert halls created specifically for the purpose of listening to concerts. Not long after, music was seen as something to be elevated and studied, in other words it became, “High Art.” This week, we’ll start by listening to music by Haydn and Mozart, getting our grounding, so to speak, in musical form. As we proceed, we'll also see where and how they lived, compare how they wrote and performed their music, and even look at some of the exact instruments they performed on all those years ago.We’ll spend latter part of the module highlighting two figures that stand at the very heart of Western music.The first is Mozart, a well-dressed, confident, eccentric, and ever brilliant innovator. We’ll explore his music through the lens of three artistic masterpieces: a piano concerto, an opera, and the Requiem mass... We’ll delve into the unique features of the music that make it the gold standard for all music for centuries to come. Perhaps the high (or low) point arrives when your instructor is ruthlessness murdered on stage by the feckless Don Giovanni.We’ll then shift over to Beethoven– a passionate, conflicted, and oft-times disheveled genius. His physical appearance may very well have served as the prototype for the stereotypical, “struggling bard,” or “tortured genius.” We’ll study some of his most famous sonatas, including his Moonlight Sonata and then go beyond his music to explore his personal life, including his struggle with deafness and depression.

教学方

Craig Wright

Henry L & Lucy G Moses Professor of Music

脚本

[MUSIC] Well, his first name was Franz. Franz Joseph Haydn. But more often in his day. And even today is referred to just as Joseph Hayden. Hayden along with Mozart and Beethoven and a very young Shubert, were the main figures as we hit scene in the Viennese classical school. The heart of classical with a capital C, the heart of classical music. Hayden came from very humble lineage. Indeed his was something of a rags to riches story. His father was a wheel maker in a farm town south of Vienna with very little formal education or musical training. The Hayden family came from here is Rora. South, South Eastern Austria, at the tip of the arrow that you see on the screen. And here's the house in Rohrau where he was born. When he was about six, the choir master of the cathedral of Saint Stephen in Vienna was going around the country recruiting. Scouting for voices and he heard young Haydn sing. And he brought him back to Vienna to be a choir boy in the cathedral school and church. Here's a modern view of that imposing church, where Haydn stayed until his voice broke in his late teens, stayed there about ten years and thereafter. He earned a living as a freelance musician. Violinist, keyboardist, organist at various churches. Jack of all musical trades. And he took music lessons as well to further learn his craft. Eventually in 1761, almost 30 he got a job as the Kapellmeister. Director of Music as we have seen before. Director of Music at the court of the family of the Esterhazy who were arguably the most wealthy and most powerful of all the nobles in Austria, save the Austrian royal family, the Emperor's family itself. So here's a slide of the Esterhazy Palace. Very large as you can see and imposing. Where they stayed during most of the winter. This is in downtown Vienna. But the principle residence of the Esterhazy was here in the town of Eisenstadt South of Vienna. Let's turn to a user friendly Googlemap here. So we got Vienna, we're going south-southeast of Vienna. And here is the town, city about 35,000 people today of Eisenstadt. And here's how the palace, the Esterházy Palace looked in the 18th century. And heres how it looks today, hasn't changed that much. Haydn's house, which he owned in the 1770's was about a block away. You can see here his modest kitchen too and Haydn would walk to work to the entrance of the palace everyday. And here's that entrance right there in the lower center and as we look through it, think about Haydn walking through there, we see in the distance the Haydn Cafe, well actually of course the Haydn Cafe wasn't there in Haydn's day, this is just another tourist sham in a sense of the sort that we saw in Bach's But notice also here in the Esterhazy Palace the Esterhazy theater. You can how big this palace and how this, big this theater was. They're very large, indeed, very magnificent. But this was not the only palace the Esterhazy had. Not just the one in Vienna and not just the one here in Eisenstadt. Prince Nikolaus built another one farther to the south. So let's take a look again at our Google map. Vienna, Eisenstadt, and now down to Eszterhazy. In the small town, actually it was more or less in the swamp when Nikolaus Eszterhazy started to build this palace called Esterhaza. And here's how it looked in the 18th century and here's how Esterhaza looks today. Now when Haydn entered the service of Nicolas Esterhazy in 1761, he was required to sign a contract, just as Bach had signed a contract. By way of an oath to the town fathers in Leipzig. As you'll see when I read this contract it's very restrictive. Hayden like every musician of the day was very much a servant, not the grand artiste. So let me read this contract for us here. He and all the musicians shall appear in uniform, and the said Joseph Haydn shall take care that he and all members of the orchestra follow the instructions given, and appear in white stockings, white linen, powdered, and with either pigtail or tiewig. He said, Haydn, shall be under obligation to compose such music as his Serene Highness may command, and neither to communicate such compositions to any other person nor allow them to be copied. But he, the prince, shall retain them for the absolute use of his Highness, and not compose for any other person without the knowledge and permission of his Highness. Well, the work of art created by the composer belonged not to the composer here as we see, but to the patron, the prince. And Haydn was a servant. As a matter of fact, there's a portrait of Haydn in the blue servant's livery of the Esterhazy princes. Let's take a look. Here it is, it's actually owned by my colleague and friend, Dan Harts who teaches. Now Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley. But that's Hayden in livery's dress. Now here's Hayden composing. Dressed up here in sort of the business suit of the day composing at a piano. You see in his right hand a pen. With which he wrote down his ideas and his left hand which he tried them out on a piano. And the piano to the right, as you can see happens to be one built by Hontang Walter. And it was used at the Esterházy court, and believed to have been played on often by Haydn. I point this out really only to give you a sense of how small these pianos were in Haydn's day, weighing less than 200 pounds. Okay, to review here with our trusty Google map. The Esterhazy were actually active at three sites during the nearly 30 years Haydn served Prince Nicolas. In, first of all, they were active in Vienna, active in Eisenstadt and active out in the boondocks, Esterhazy eventually, prince Nicholas died, and Haydn was given a pension. And he moved back into Vienna. But very quickly he then set off for London where he'd been offered a high paying commission to write a collection of symphonies, 12 of them, that were to be performed in London. And this, he did on and off living in London between 1791 and 1794. These were performed in the Hanover square rooms. So as you can see by this map the arrow points to the Hanover square rooms but if you look just slightly below that red arrow you see Brook Street and who died on Brooks street? None other, then George Frideric Handel. So there is Handel only about a block from where Haydn was performing his symphonies in the Hanover Square Rooms. And here is how from this slide those Hanover Square performing quarters looked in the 18th century. This is something of a bellwether, a mark of the importance of the growing number of large concert halls at this time. And this is how this same hall looked in the 19th century. Under normal conditions it would accommodate about 900 listeners. But for a performance of a Haydn symphony in 1792, 1,500 were squeezed in. Well, eventually, Haydn retired and returned to Vienna to become the toast of the town. Here, we see a painting of a famous event. Vienna, 1808 the great hall of the University of Vienna. Antonio Salieri conducts a performance of Haydn's Oratorio the Creation. In honor of the aging Haydn who is sitting in a special chair as you can see the arrow pointing to it there at the bottom center of the screen. Everyone of any import had turned out to hear the music of the aging master. But because of his success with the London symphonies Haydn ended up with a ton of money he made from those London symphonies. About 1.2 million dollars in money of today. And with it he bought, bought a splendid new house in what was then the suburbs of Vienna. Now it's more or less in the central district. It was here that he died in 1809. The last music he played was a melody called the Emperor's hymn. He played this melody everyday on the piano before retiring at night, and there's a story behind this melody, in 1796 the armies in Napoleon Bonaparte had invaded the Austrian Empire. The French under Napoleon already had their national anthem, the Marseillaise. The English had God Save the Queen but the Austrians had nothing. So, Haydn, being the most and famous, most important musician of the day, was commissioned to write a hymn, a song, a anthem in praise of the emperor, Emperor Franz Joseph II. It came to be called the Emperor's Hymn. Here's the melody part. And I'll try to, I'll swing around here and play the tune. [MUSIC] And then that repeats, next phrase. [MUSIC] Last phrase. [MUSIC] Well Hayden was so pleased with that melody that the next year 1797 he worked it into the slow movement of a string quartet. Now remember a string quarter is usually written in four movements. Fast first movement. Slow second movement. Minuet in trio fast finale. And of course it's played by four instruments. First and second violins, viola and cello. And, Haydn used this slow second movement of a string quartet to show case his new Emperor's Hymn, he used it as the melody for a set of variations. Thus we have a movement in theme and variation form, with the emperor's hymn providing the theme. Haydn more or less single handedly created the string quartet, music with four more or less equal parts, equal players. As you see here. Here we are in variation two .The cello has the emperor's theme. As you can see by the blue arrow. Let me see if I can play the cello part here. [MUSIC] >> Okay, that's the cello part. Now let's listen to this movement of the Emperor's Quartet. The slow second movement in the Emperor's Quartet based on the Emperor's Hymn. And it's performed here by a young string quartet based at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. The Quartet. As we start off. The theme is played by the first violin. [MUSIC] Phrase one is the theme. [MUSIC] Notice how the first violinist is shaking that left hand to play bravado to give a richer timbre tone to the pitch, [MUSIC] Phrase two [MUSIC] In phrase three. Texture here. Is homophonic they're all basically. Playing chords again. Tune plus chords. Repeated that third phrase. And of course we've got first violin, second violin, cello and viola on the far right. [MUSIC] Okay. First variation, who's got the melody now? Can you tell? Well, the second violin does. As the first violin plays counterpoint against it, second phrase. And generally speaking the counterpoint is going along in rapid moving 16th notes. [MUSIC] Third phrase, obviously the cello and the viola don't play at all in this variation. So it's just melody, plus contrapuntal accompaniment. Variation two. Clearly the large cello has. The Emperor's Theme here. [MUSIC] The other three instruments providing accompaniment with light counterpoint [MUSIC] Second phrase. [MUSIC] Final phrase. [MUSIC] And repeated that final phrase. Okay, we're going to stop. And as we proceed with the next slide, we'll see that we stopped exactly where the cello was playing. [MUSIC] And so on we go, but we can also see again on this screen the equal distribution of the music, typical of a classical string quartet invented by Haydn with The Emperor's Hymn in the cello part in the bass part. Alright, let's review, let's take a moment to review the life and music of Joseph Haydn. [INAUDIBLE] He's a representative of the classical Viennese school of the late 18th and early 19th century. Educated musically for the most part at the Cathedral of, of St. Stephen in Vienna. His patron was the Esterhazy. He was taken in their service in 1761. Served them for 30 years. In 1790, he received a pension and went into something akin to phased retirement. But still went off to London, where he composed his 12 last symphonies, the London symphonies. Partially resident there in the year 1971 through 1795. They were performed in the Hanover Square Rooms, as we saw. The Emperor's Hymn was created in the mid 1790s as a way of honoring the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. But notice, today that's actually the national anthem of both Austria and Germany. So every time Germany and Austria does it occasionally but most often Germany wins a medal at the Olympics or the Germans win the World Cup. What you're hearing a national anthem is actually the music of Joseph Hayden that he himself subsequently incorporated in the Emperor's Quarter. And, again, Haydn more or less invented this genre of the quartet. Which, to paraphrase, paraphrase the famous Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is a civilized conversation of learned and, indeed, equal. Participants.